Eye've been granted a much-coveted CMJ pass from my pal, so other than tonight (when I'm stuck at stinky stinky work until 11), it's been a veritable showfest. If you're not aware:

CMJ Music Marathon is a 4 day event wherein, basically, a million zillion bands (10 of which you've heard the name, 4 of which you'd want to see) play shows all over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Suckers pay nearly $450 for a badge which allows you to get into any of these shows. I say "suckers" because, realistically, you can only get to one show per night, so you're ending up paying about 4 times as much as if you'd just bought tickets to the shows individually. But then you wouldn't get to rock your badge at the door and feel special (mine's getting iced-out as we speak). Plus there's like panel discussions and film screenings and a free bag of useless crap, but I'm only going to the showz:

Wednesday - I drink about a ton of beer, smoke about a ton of weed, and hitch a ride downtown around 9ish. Unfortunately, bumpin' 2Pac on the way down is the night's highlight.

The late start means we miss all but the last few songs of Octopus Project at Rothko. Not bad for instrumental wankery, and the drummer's good. Acid Mothers Temple was supposed to play, but they didn't, instead it was to be some other bands I never heard of. So we cab it to the Knitting Factory.

Sit at the bar and drink more throughout the set by some band called the Lovemakers. Later, I see the singer getting his game on with some coeds at the bar. Eventually, we stand towards the back for Feist, who looks like an exact cross between these two girls I know. Weird. She's good, though. We call out for "Mushaboom" until she plays it, then she's done.

Now the reason we've come over to the Knitting Factory is that Big Boi, Killer Mike, Bubba Sparxxx, and any number of other Dirty Southerners are supposed to be going on at 1:30. It's not 1:45, I've had about a dozen beers and it's about a million degrees, so we ball. Good thing, too: they didn't go on until 2:30!

Thursday - The plan is to head to Webster Hall to check out Lady Sovereign, at which point Owen will bail over to BB King's to see Little Brother and I'll stick it out to see Blackalicious and Aesop Rock. Instead, Owen passes out at his house until 9ish and I have a two-hour breakup conversation while I wait (don't worry, R/R, we're still good friends).

So since BB Kings is much closer to my house and I'm still beat from the night before, we head over there just in time to see J-Live. He's good. So is the guy after him, Rhymefest, who is somehow related to Kanye. Like, they're pals. Rhymefest is good, even though his name is sooooooo lame.

Also lame: $7 bottles of Budweiser.

Eventually, they start trotting out the Hall of Justus, which is basically everyone that Little Brother knows from North Carolina. There's some boring soul guy, some meh rappers, etc. At one point, though Smif 'n' Wessun came onstage for a song! I wish they'd done more, cause their new album is solid.

Anyway, Phonte and Big Pooh eventually get onstage, and they pretty much kill for an hour and a half. They've both got great stage presence and Phonte in particular is a funny dude. At the end, he donned this Rick James-meets-Barry White get-up and led the entire crew in an impromptu acapella rendition of Prince's "Kiss."

Now that's how you end a show.

Literature is [the art] best suited to challenging absolutes of all kinds. Because it is in its origin the schismatic Other of the sacred (and authorless) text, so it is also the art most likely to fill our god-shaped holes

Saturday - After struggling through work and then dozing through the 4th quarter of Clemson/Miami, I head down to the Village to buy some drugs and watch a band. No riverjumping, though.

Properly lit, I (eventually) figure out where it is I'm going and make my way into Rothko for the triple-beam lyrical dream of C Rayz Walz, Pete Rock, and the freshly reunited Cannibal Ox.

First up: ok, there's weak, there's wack, and there's Walz. I've always heard from even the hardest of hardcore Jukies that C Rayz wasn't much on the mic, and its worse than I'd imagined. The man has no flow, spent half the show doing long, pedestrian freestyles, and changed outfits on stage about four times. At one point, he was joined on the mic by his son, who couldn't have been more than 9, and the kid had skills at least on par with his pops. This being a Def Jux show, though, the white kids loved it.

Next up: Pete Rock. Pete motherfuckin' Rock. Now it's one thing when you see a DJ spinning shit from Illmatic and Mecca and the Soul Brother, but it's a whole other beast when the man on the turntables is the producer responsible for the beats. As usual, I couldn't help feeling a great disdain for my fellow concertgoers, who stood as stock still as an emo crowd while one of hip-hop's living legends absolutely murdered on the tables. It's cool, though, cause on his way off stage, I gave him a pound.

Finally, a swanked-up El P took the stage to loudly proclaim the reunion of Cannibal Ox and their inking a new contract with Def Jux. Great. Vast and Vordul ran through the salient highlights of The Cold Vein, though the soundsystem was so maxed out that it was hard to hear their verses, and C Rayz Walz, Carnage, and a few other suckers were crowding up the stage. Meanwhile, Aesop Rock was sitting off to the side and not rapping at all.

Literature is [the art] best suited to challenging absolutes of all kinds. Because it is in its origin the schismatic Other of the sacred (and authorless) text, so it is also the art most likely to fill our god-shaped holes

That's devastating... I had your wedding planned out and everything!(It was going to involve everybody hitting large crystal bongs and a laser-light show to the tune of Illimatic, obviously)

I saw Lee 'Scratch' Perry and The Mad Professor on Saturday night, Mad Professor was absolutely fantastic, which was good because Perry was erratic and only on stage for an hour or so.

If I can afford it I will be seeing Method Man and Redman along with DJ Premier and a bunch of others in Auckland next month, but if not I'll have to be content with John Cleese in his first ever solo tour in November, I'm buying myself a ticket as a graduation present.

It's not every night that you get to see one of your favourite performers at one of the most renowned music venues in the world.....so this was met with some expectation.

But expectations soon dissipated when I found my seat up on the second tier. . The configurations were private booths of five people. The thing is - four people sit just forward of the box (out in the atrium of the stadium) whilst one person sits on a raised seat in the actual booth by themself and peeps through a curtain window to watch the concert. That person was me and I thought I would be just as well off watching TV from my tragically small hotel room. So I went and complained, and to my surprise - they found me a really good seat in the stalls with a perfect view!

A bit more about the venue - the Royal Albert Hall has a huge dome. In early years this was a great visual feature but it proved no good for sound (RAH was claimed to be the only venue where you could hear a British performer playing their songs TWICE...due to the echo). They have since fixed this by placing in a lot of sound reflectors/buffers draped from the ceiling.

Anyway, as for the concert - Ray opened with 'I'm Not Like Everybody Else' and in the first set he did about 5 unplugged songs from what is arguably The Kinks greatest album - Village Green Preservation Society.

There were songs such as Waterloo Sunset, Sunny Afternoon, Where Have All The Good Times Gone?, Autumn Almanac, Dead End Street, Well Respected Man (this sounded particularly good on acoustic), Dedicated Follower of Fashion, 20th Century Man, Oklahoma USA, All Day and All of the Night, You Really Got Me, Days (in dedication to Kirsten McColl.....Ray looked upward as he sang 'although you're gone, you're with me every single day, believe me') and he finished with a rocking version of 'David Watts' which he said was never a hit for The Kinks but was for The Jam. Overall a brilliant concert. I also bought my first 'bootleg' t-shirt for a bargain 5 quid. London rules.

The atmospheric, prog-rockish, trumpet playing, two drummer band returned this time to a packed house.

IGGY AND THE STOOGES, Big Day Out, Jan 29, 2006

As the new moon beckoned the Chinese New Year, Iggy and The Stooges took to the main stage of Princess Park, Melbourne. Playing to a crowd of 50 000, The Stooges interchanged songs between their first two albums as young Melbournians, danced, moshed and crowd surfed to the raw intonation of punk songs invented almost 40 years ago. The year of the dog was greeted with the classic 'I Wanna Be Your Dog'. Discerning Bowie fans will recall this number being played in the encore of Glass Spider concerts. Tonight, Iggy played the song twice - four songs in and then again at the very end. Then during 'Real Cool Time', Iggy announced: "I can't stand a boring set. Come on stage. Get up here and fuck this shit up.....KILL ME!!!" About 40 kids rushed the stage and Iggy disappeared into a mass of bodies. People stayed on stage and danced for a couple more numbers as Iggy powered on. A brilliant show and although Iggy looks like a bag of leather, his spirit and energy defies age more than any other performer in the world.

FRANZ FERDINAND, Big Day Out, Jan 29, 2006

They sounded good although I could not really see a thing waiting in a good spot for Iggy.

THE WHITE STRIPES, Big Day Out, Jan 29, 2006

I bought (and hated) their first album and although nothing tonight seemed as painful as that experience, I still don't see what the fuss is about. They also did a suckish version of a suckish song (Dolly Parton's 'Joelene') but some of their other stuff was OK.

SARAH BLASKO, Big Day Out, Jan 29, 2006

A bit uncharactersitic for a Big Day Out festival but she did well. She's an Australian artist that plays a few gigs around here regularly so I might check her out again.

HENRY ROLLINS, Big Day Out, Jan 29, 2006

This was a spoken word. Rollins talked about how much Bush sucks (and Howard for supporting him) and promoted the values of Iggy and The Ramones for which he had some excellent stories. He also claimed that local band The Beasts of Burbon kicked the arse of Nirvana at the BDO back in the early 1990s. He was an interesting and entertaining speaker.

THE QUARRELMEN, Greyhound Hotel, Feb 3, 2006

Their first gig in 2 years. These guys are a terrific Beatles covers band. No costumes just down to earth rocking versions of their cooler later material including obscurities. If more covers bands were this good, we wouldn't need to see the originals. Certainly, I preferred this gig to the McCartney show I saw at the MCG.